Enterprises may supply employees (as well as other associates) with mobile devices to satisfy the demands of the enterprise. Enterprises, based on their size and mobile connectivity needs, may engage with a mobile communication service provider to create single and multilevel account structures. Thus, enterprises may gain structured discount pricing from the service provider to outfit their employees with approved mobile devices (at the discount pricing). In general, approved baseline mobile devices include hardware features, applications features and/or specific devices of a specific manufacturer which are approved for use by employees of the enterprise. For example, each enterprise may create a portfolio of devices for use by their employees and negotiates specific discount pricing with the service provider for those devices.
With older, more traditional, approaches, the enterprise selected a number of types of baseline mobile devices and approved only those baseline devices for use by employees of the enterprise. Often, the enterprise agreed to pay the purchase price of an approved device for each employee and possibly some or all of the monthly service charges that were expected to be attributable to enterprise related employee communications. This older approach, however, limited the types of devices available to the enterprise employees to only those approved by the enterprise.
Employees that use the approved baseline mobile devices supplied by the enterprise (to satisfy the enterprise demands), however, may also desire access to additional device features (such as more advanced, full featured service offerings and/or device capabilities) or access to different devices than the baseline devices. The cost of these additional features/different devices may not be covered by the enterprise. Employees, however, may be willing to pay for more robust (alternative) devices (i.e., having device features different from the baseline device or being a different device than the baseline device).
A need exists for providing a secure platform for employees to purchase devices alternative to enterprise-approved baseline devices at the enterprise discount.